Author: marionvermazen

We are spending three nights in Manarola, Italy.  It is the second from the south of the five Cinque Terre towns. Today we hiked from Manarola to Corniglia, the middle town. It was an absolutely perfect day, temp about 70, sunny and no wind. 

Yesterday I included a picture of our view from the window of Ca’ D’ Andrean Hotel where we are staying. This is a picture of that window. I really like this hotel. 

We saw lots of wine grape vines and olive trees along the trail. According to the brochure/map for Cinque Terre the terraces and walls on all the hills here where built about 1000 years ago. A lot of them are still being farmed. 

Both yesterday and today we have seen what I would call cog lines going up the hills. We weren’t sure how they were used but then today we saw a film crew being transported on one of the cog lines. 

This is a guy repairing a line. 

This is Corniglia our destination today. You can see the train station in the bottom of the picture. 

The trail today was much better than yesterday but it was longer and my knees are a bit sore tonight. We were told that train service might be disrupted today because of a country wide strike for National Women’s day. I was not looking forward to hiking back the way we had come and climbing up the hills we had just come down. But luckily the trains were running and we were able to take the very short train ride through a long tunnel back to Manarola. 

For dinner we started with mussels. 

Then I had ravioli with a walnut sauce and Duke had potatoes, anchovies, and tomatoes. 

When we were planning our trip Allison highly recommended that we visit Cinque Terre. So that’s where our travels took us today. It is stunningly beautiful. Cinque Terre is a string of five villages on the cliffs of the Mediterranean. You can hike between them or take a train that connects the town via tunnels through the cliffs. Here you can see our train leaving the station. We are staying in Manarola. 

We are staying here three nights. The hotel Duke booked for us is awesome. This is the view from our room out onto our terrace. 

The lady at the tourist information office explains that the hike from Manarola to the town south of here is only about a kilometer but it is all steps up and then steps down. We hiked and she was right. We went up up up sometimes climbing on the rocks. The views were stupendous. 

For dinner we ate at a little ten table seafood restaurant that we had to climb up to and then walk along a pedestrian path to get to. We shared home made pasta, and crab. 

This morning we took the train to Ventimiglia on the Italian border. There we bought a ticket to Genoa farther down the coast. 

Once we got to Genoa we walked to the city center and saw the recreation of the house where Columbus was born. 

Since we are in Italy we had Pizza for dinner. It was great!

Monte Carlo is the second smallest country in the world after The Vatican. Although it’s size is only about two square kilometers there is a lot to do here. We took the hop on hop off bus tour. 

We saw the palace. 

And then went to the car museum. There were so many beautiful cars. 

Finally we went to the aquarium. There many many strange and beautiful fish. 

I had post cards to mail but they had French straps on them so we walked in to France so I could mail them before we head into Italy tomorrow. 

We took the train today along the Mediterranean to Monte Carlo. It is in a beautiful setting. 

Monte Carlo is clearly a high income locale. We walked around a bit and checked out one of the casinos. The card gods were on our side and we won €150. 

The main Montre Carlo Casino charges €10 to get in and then the minimum bet is €25 so we just checked out the lobby. 

There are lots of high end shops here and lots of fancy cars. 

For dinner we started with octopus salad. 

Then for the main course fish and pasta. 

On the walk back to the hotel we saw two Maseratis. I suspect we were on the Grand Prix route because they seemed to be enjoying shifting down into the turn. We had desert and a nightcap in the hotel bar before heading back to our room.